MXM thankful for Malaysian fans’ “warm hospitality”

More than half a year after their debut as the musical duo MXM, Lim Young-min and Kim Dong-hyun finally make their way over to Malaysia for their first ever official fan meeting in the country.

“I’ve always known we have plenty of support from Malaysian fans,” said Young-min during the press conference held earlier today at Ritz-Carlton Kuala Lumpur, “and I finally got to see it for myself, the warm hospitality from fans here, so we are very thankful for that.”

Despite having debuted only in September last year, there’ll be no shortage of songs for the group to perform during their fan meeting as MXM already has a total of two EPs (“Unmix”, “match Up”) and one single album under their belts.

The single album, “Rematch”, is their latest and was released on 6 March. It contains two songs, “Gone Cold” and “Love Me Now”, which decidedly carry darker elements compared to their more upbeat, funky songs from their earlier albums.

“For this album, we show more maturity so I was happy to show a different side of us,” said Young-min.

MXM gets a tiny KLCC each to commemorate their first visit to Malaysia.

When asked if there were any music concept they would like to try next, Dong-hyun replied, “So far we’ve tried funky music or something that’s mixed with tropical sound, so we’d like to try out band music. Since our company (Brand New Music) is well-known for hip hop, we’d like to try hip hop too.”

Fans might be able to see their ‘band dream’ come true as Dong-hyun even admitted that he is able to play guitar and piano now – though humbly added that he wasn’t much good in both yet.

Change of music direction can be expected in the future when the MXM members join their fellow “Produce 101 Season 2” alums and Brand New Music singers, Lee Dae-hwi and Park Woo-jin (who are both currently promoting under Wanna One), and start actively performing as the group Brand New Boys.

MXM taking a commemorative photo with the sponsors and organisers of their first fan meeting in Malaysia.

Both members answered the questions asked by emcee Hani Fadzil calmly and clearly during the press conference, though Young-min did become adorably flustered when asked about Singapore, apologetically saying that he was born in the island country but was only raised there for five years so he didn’t have much recollection of his growing up there.

Later, both members faced another hurdle, so to speak, when they were asked to reveal three things about each other that fans might not know about. “This is hard, I’m sure fans already know a lot about us,” Young-min commented before lapsing into silence as he thought hard of what to say about Dong-hyun, while the latter similarly stared at his band member in silence as he also tried to conjure up a reply.

In the end both were only able to list one thing for one another, with Young-min saying that even though Dong-hyun is well-known for his big appetite, he doesn’t seem to have much of it anymore now.

“Young-min hyung,” said Dong-hyun, using the honorifics used by younger Korean males when addressing an older male, as he is about three years younger than the 1995-er, “One of the secrets that fans might not know about him is nowadays he’s very into film cameras. He will take the camera with him and take pictures everywhere.”

Well, MXM fans, better come to the fan meet dressed to the nines because you just might end up captured on Young-min’s camera!